3 comments:

Cars aren't necessarily feminine. Or masculine. But they can be described both ways, in the same way that we personify or characterize any other inanimate object. Unlike some languages(like Spanish, for example), English doesn't have gender-specific grammar. So we get to choose. Most of the time, our choices have more to do with culture than syntax. During the time of Gatsby, men owned cars, took care of them, kept them pretty, etc. & in turn the cars gave pleasure in their appearance a SN performance on the road. This is a cultural throwback to referring to boats as feminine. The literary practice of assigning human qualities to something that isn't human is also known as anthropomorphism.